Gay Thomas Attwater

Gay Thomas Attwater (“Florio”) (1736-92), was the older brother of Caroline Attwater Whitaker (“Dorinda”) (1746-1824),  Marianna Attwater Head (“Maria”) (1749?-1832), and Jane Attwater Blatch (“Myrtilla”) (1753-1843).  All four siblings composed poetry under their literary nom de plumes. Besides the poetry of Marianna and Jane, several poems by Gay Thomas also survive in the Steele Collection, now residing at the Angus Library, Regent's Park College, Oxford. He and his wife, Mary (“Fidelia”), would have seven children: John Gay, Sarah (1765-1826), Thomas (b. 1767), William (1772-1818), Maria (1783-1840), Anna (1784-1825), and Philemon (1787-1832). Their three daughters never married. Gay Thomas remained at Bodenham throughout his life, worshiping primarily at the Brown Street congregation in Salisbury. Caroline removed to Bratton after her marriage to Thomas Whitaker, where the Whitakers were already one of the leading Baptist families in the Bratton/Westbury area of Wiltshire. Jane Attwater would also move to Bratton after her marriage to Joseph Blatch in 1790; Marianna lived in Bradford-on-Avon after her marriage to George Head in 1773. Gay Thomas Attwater was a stauch Particular Baptist and a prominent person in the Bodenham and Salisbury area for most of his adult life. He appears frequently in the Attwater-Steele correspondence and in Jane Attwater's diary, much of which can be found in Timothy Whelan, gen. ed., Nonconformist Women Writers, 1720-1840, 8 vols. (London: Pickering & Chatto, 2011), and at Nonconformist and Dissenting Women's Studies, 1650-1850, ed. Timothy Whelan, at https://www.nonconformistwomenwriters1650-1850.com.